Can a Commercial Be Too Sexy For Its Own Good? Ask Axe

Going inside one of the most famously salacious TV ads of the last decade to learn how an iconic campaign gets made and why it's possible to sell too well

Axe

In general, women tend to be more easily
persuaded by ads that are more romantic than sexual, ones that emphasize commitment, devotion, and partnership. Not surprisingly, men, on
the other hand, respond to sexual innuendo and women in bikinis,
especially when the ads or commercials are leavened with a heaping
dose of adolescent humor.

Axe, a line of men's personal-care products that includes deodorant body sprays, sticks, and roll-ons, and shampoos, is renowned in marketing circles for
how it has craftily positioned its products as bottled pheromones -- magical
potions that can transform the greasiest, scrawniest, most acne-prone schlub into a conﬁdent, gorgeous, chiseled sex magnet. The
behind-the-scenes story of how Unilever created this now-legendary
Axe campaign isn't just another demonstration of the power of sex in
advertising; it's also a fascinating example of just how deeply companies and marketers probe the depths of our inner psyches -- our hopes,
dreams, and daydreams -- in the service of crafting the kinds of provocative, scandalously sexual, and smashingly successful campaigns that
push the very limits of advertising as we know it.

A LOVE POTION FOR NERVOUS TEENS

Unilever accompanied roughly 100 males (identical studies were
later carried out across other European countries, North America, and
Latin America) ages 15 to 50 to the pubs until three or four in
the morning and (soberly, while secretly taking copious notes) watched
them in action. After poring over their pages and pages of notes, via a process known in the industry as "segmentation," the Unilever team isolated six psychological proﬁles of the male animal -- and the potential Axe user: the Predator, the Natural Talent, the Marriage-Material Guy, Always the Friend, the Insecure Novice, and the Enthusiastic Novice.

Ultimately, they decided the most obvious choice would be the Insecure Novice,
followed by the Enthusiastic Novice, followed by the Natural Talent.
Why? Well, the ﬁrst two segments, the marketers reasoned, with their
lack of self-esteem and experience, could be easily persuaded that Axe
would be the key to enhanced success with women -- they would spray it on to ramp up their self-conﬁdence. The Natural Talent guys could probably be convinced to use Axe as a ﬁnishing touch before going out for a night on the town.

So with the Insecure Novice as the primary target, Axe came up
with a series of 30-second TV commercials that preyed on what its
research had revealed to be the ultimate male fantasy: to be irresistible
to not just one but several sexy women. These ads were nothing short
of marketing genius. In one 30-second spot, an army of bikini-clad
female Amazons, drawn by the irresistible scent, storms an empty
beach to surround and seduce a helpless, scrawny young male Axe user.
In another, a naked, soapy young man is showering when suddenly the
bathroom ﬂoor cracks and he tumbles (still naked and dripping with
suds) into a basement ﬁlled with scantily clad young women who proceed to bump and grind lasciviously enough to make a porn star break
out in hives.
"No one wants to play with dirty equipment," intones a woman in
another less-than-subtle Axe ad, before proceeding, with the help of
an assistant --"Monica, can you help me with these dirty balls?" she
asks -- to clean and fondle two white golf balls in her manicured hand.
"If you spray it, they will come" is the suggestive promise of another ad,
in which a pair of college-age women bodily drag a college-age
geek into what is, presumably, a waiting boudoir. In
yet another, a man sprays on Axe's Dark Temptation
body spray, which immediately transforms him into a life-size piece
of chocolate -- which a bevy of hot women off the street nibble at suggestively for the remainder of the 30-second spot. The message of
each of these couldn't be clearer: use Axe and get laid. Repeatedly, by
different women.

WHEN SEX SELLS A LITTLE TOO MUCH

The campaign was an instant hit, and Axe quickly became the No. 1 male brand in the total antiperspirant/deodorant category,
earning Unilever $71 million in sales in 2006 ($50 million more than
its closest rival, Tag) and $186 million (excluding Walmart sales) in
2007, an increase of 14 percent from a year earlier --
which was leagues
ahead of its nearest rival. What's more, sales of the brand's other products shot up as well, because body sprays are often used as a "training
fragrance," and if a young male cottons to a brand, he's more likely to
buy other products from the same company (what we in the industry
call "the halo effect").

However, the brand's early success soon began to backﬁre. The
problem was, the ads had worked too well in persuading the Insecure
Novices and Enthusiastic Novices to buy the product. Geeks and dorks
everywhere were now buying Axe by the caseload, and it was hurting
the brand's image. Eventually (in the United States, at least), to most
high-school and college-age males, Axe had essentially become the
brand for pathetic losers and, not surprisingly, sales took a huge hit.

Then Axe faced another big problem. Insecure high-school students had been so convincingly persuaded that Axe would make them
sexually appealing that they began completely dousing themselves in
it. According to CBC News, "Some boys have been dousing themselves in Axe,
apparently believing commercials that show a young man applying the
deodorant and being immediately hit on by beautiful women." It got
to the point where the students were reeking so heavily of it that it was
becoming a distraction at school. So much so that in Minnesota, school-
district ofﬁcials attempted to ban it, claiming that "the man spray has
been abused, and the aerosol stench is a hazard for students and faculty."

Despite its few stumbles, the wild success of Axe's ad campaign
just goes to show what can happen when a brand and its clever marketers probe and plug into our most private and deeply rooted sexual
fantasies and desires. And it goes to show that these days, as ever, our
most deeply seated sexual fantasies and desires can be some of the most
powerful persuaders.

Excerpted from Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom, 2011. Published by Crown Business.